"Palin's Speech is Classic Casuistry"

To everyone's -- including the Republican Party's -- great surprise, Sarah Palin resigned as the Governor of Alaska during the July 4th weekend.

To no one's great surprise, two of the New York Times' most mordant columnists, Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd, promptly dipped their pens in their customary acid and went after Palin. Both writers deconstructed Palin's words and then commented on them in their usual sardonic style.

For the purpose of our primary focus on how one tells one's story, let's concentrate on the key paragraph of Palin's resignation announcement:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources and though it may be tempting and more comfortable to just kind of keep your head down and plod along and appease those who are demanding, hey, just sit down and shut up. But that's a worthless, easy path out. That's a quitter's way out.

Ms. Collins' reaction: "Basically, the point was that Palin is quitting as governor because she's not a quitter."

Ms. Dowd's reaction was even stronger: "Palin's speech is," she wrote, and then, reaching for an uncommonly appropriate word, called it, "classic casuistry."

To demonstrate just how appropriate, here is the wordnik.com definition: "Specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead."

Palin's crossed signals on quitting prompted even Karl Rove to weigh in. Here is how the former media guru for George W. Bush and now a political analyst for Fox News, put it: "Look, I say this as a fan, and I'm terribly disappointed in this... But how does she answer the question of 'Gee, it was too tough for me to be governor of the state of Alaska, but I'm tough enough to be president of the United States?' That's an awful difficult question to answer."

The point here is that no speaker can afford to stand and deliver a message that is self-contradictory. Many politicians, with their inclination to pander and evade, get away with mixed messages, a lesser form of casuistry, because we have come to tolerate their ambiguity. But even politicians -- and certainly no business person -- can ever get away with the kind of reverse logic that Sarah Palin put forth on the most patriotic day of the year. She deserves the wrath of Collins and Dowd, and the no-confidence vote from Karl Rove.

Comments

[sippewissett]

Panned by Rove + Silence from Rush = Kiss of Death for Palin from the Twin Spinners of GOP Reality

[carl99e]

Paul Begalla listed a number of instances when Sarah had decided to leave various positions she had initially campaigned for. She is not a hard worker and truth be told she is finished with politics in Alaska and vise a versa. She is looking for greener pastures. But I doubt there are any for her to be had.

[Decipherer]

It's "Begala," by the way, and as he pointed out, she has quit every job she's ever had or held, and in the case of public office before her term(s) expired. There is a pattern here, people, regardless of what one thinks of Sarah Palin or her politics.

She doesn't want to work because if she did, she would have hunkered-down in wherever it is she lives, done her job, kept her mouth shut, and brought in experts on foreign and domestic policy to tutor her on all of the things she plainly doesn't know or understands. She doesn't want to do the hard work of studying and preparing, she simply wants to rant & rave, and skim the benefits.

She IS "looking for greener pastures," however, and that involves green, as in cash, for speaking enagements, books she won't or can't write, and other means of making millions off her looks and fractured syntax.

Nice "work" if you can get it.

[MizJ]

And enjoying being viewed as a "martyr" that was driven out by the press. This is the move that few have uncovered. Her supporters will be building shrines for "poor Sarah" while she rakes in the bucks and looks pretty for the camera. Not such a "dumb" move after all is said and one.

[mh11060]

Absolutely not necessarily!!

[jalowe1957]

Speaking of casuistry and poison penmanship, let the acid bath begineth...

[trisha08]

I can't prove this is true, but it sounds in keeping with Palin's over-inflated sense of self----

I read from an blog from a woman who lives in Wasilla that when Palin announced her campaign for mayor, she announced that one day she would be President.

Hmmmm.

[fedupinfla]

She treated her "term" as Gov like she would have a beauty pageant reign...She wanted to show up for photo ops & ribbon cuttings, sign autographs, and wave to the masses like royalty from her state owned SUV. Notice how she kept saying she was going to "give up her title"?? It was like listening to Princess Diana when she said she was quitting because of the paparazzi...Diana even said she didn't "need her title to do good works"...Sound familiar?

But then it started to get tougher. It didn't help that after the campaign, she was under the scrutiny of the entire country. Before, only Alaskans knew when she screwed up. Now, we ALL know. She didn't want to be there anyway. A blind man could've seen that!!

[trisha08]

Exactly. Plus, the price of oil plummeted, the economy is bad, Alaksa's unemployment rate is rising. Palin rode the wave in good times, but she has no idea how to govern in the bad times.

Yes, she fell in love with the crowds, the glamour, the expensive clothes, the jets, the lights, the cameras.....the good life---all too tempting for a "hockey mom".

But, some people mistakenly believe that Palin was plucked out of obscurity. The truth is, she had been courting Washington insiders for years. That's how Kristol met her and how her name kept coming up for the VP. She has long felt she was deserved all the attention of the lower 48. This is no accident and no surprise.

[goodasitgets]

"She deserves the wrath of Collins and Dowd, and the no-confidence vote from Karl Rove." Stay tuned, because there is much more to come.....................................................